Despite staying literally around the corner, we somehow didn't make it into Notre Dame until day three of our trip. The boys were somewhat underwhelmed by the interior, even the amazing south rose window, although they were intrigued to learn about just how long it took to build and all the changes over the centuries. Otherwise they were maybe a little creeped out by being inside the cathedral. I'm assigning Kevin, their spiritual guide and mentor, full responsibility for their discomfort in houses of worship (or taking all the credit, I suppose, depending on your views on organized religion).

Henry, naturally, insisted on lighting a candle. For whom, I'm not entirely sure.

Climbing up to the top of the Tower proved far more popular. Heroic Kevin waited outside in line in the freezing cold for at least half an hour while the rest of us waited in a far more pleasant cafe with croissants and hot chocolate. The climb to the top was either 864 steps (according to B's count, which included both up and down) or 387 steps (according to the official Notre Dame count, but who are you going to believe here?)

My adorable little gargoyles (or chimera, if we're being technical, since they don't actually spout water, ahhh, the things you learn on the Notre Dame website):

Turns out the top of Notre Dame is ideal for demonstrating tae kwon do moves.

After the climb, we wandered over to the Pompidou Center to show them the (sadly water-less) Stravinsky Fountain and Brendan ooh'ed and aah'ed over the glorious external escalators (yet oddly declined my offer to ride up them).

After lunch, we took a marathon subway ride out to la Cité des Sciences et de l'Industrie, a stellar kids' science museum. Somehow, I missed that one during my semester living in Paris.

We ended the day at the adorable little St Regis bistro just across the bridge in Ile St Louis. The boys were their usual extremely genteel and well-mannered selves, as evidenced below.

The highlight of day two was our trip to La Tour Eiffel. It's safe to say that seeing the tower was Henry's main reason for wanting to go to Paris in the first place, and the whole experience was made that much better by the fact that we (1) took a double decker RER train to get there and (2) had advance tix up to the very top floor. I was a little worried that Henry was imagining us literally clinging to the tippy top of the radio tower and that he would be totally miffed when he found himself on just another, albeit higher, platform, but nope, he was thrilled (perhaps mostly because his friend from school, as he kept telling us, "only went to the second floor, but we went to the summit!" Our children are not un-competitive.) When we got back down, we bought him his very own tower from one of the zillions of vendors working the area, which was his pride and joy until later that night when Owen bought a smaller, but light-up, tower from one of the zillions of vendors outside the Louvre. Cue mild, completely predictable, somewhat temporary, Hank despair.

Tightrope walking on the first level might have been even more popular than going up to "le sommet."

We fortified ourselves post-Tour (hey, taking the stairs back down takes lots of energy) with our first round of crepes for the day and yet another carousel. The boys finally believe me that beurre et sucre crepes are even more delicious than nutella ones.

The crepes gave us just enough strength to walk through Champ de Mars to find a bistro for lunch. Bizarrely, they all declined to visit the Musee de l'Armee afterward - boy children turning down weapons and Napoleon's tomb? - so this is the closest we came.

I insisted on going into the Rodin Museum - the gardens were just as lovely as I remembered. We spent a surprisingly long time scrutinizing the Gates of Hell, before spending the rest of the time giggling over the naked male sculptures and imitating various poses.

All thinking deep thoughts per usual.

At Henry's insistence, we went to the Louvre that night for the sole reason of seeing the Mona Lisa. Naturally, right after we left the museum, he informed us that he was also desperate to see the Potato Eaters. (I suspect trying to once again one-up his friend from school.)

Even at 9pm, the crowds were three-deep at Mona but we made our way to the front fairly easily for the obligatory selfies.

The boys were completely flummoxed by all the love lavished on Mona - "this other painting right across from it is HUGE so why is no one is looking at it!?!"

Taking a break to admire the incredibly intricate Louvre ceilings.

After we got home just before 10pm (wild and crazy European vacation!), we all agreed we needed to make an emergency, PJ-clad run around the corner to l'ile st louis for Amorino Gelato (allegedly open until midnight). Luckily, after it turned out to be closed, we found a late night crepe joint for one last pre-bedtime fix. The hardships of vacation living...

This year's spring break trip to France truly was, to use the boys' favorite word, epic. I was seriously concerned about how Henry would handle both the overnight flight, the first day's horrible sleep deprivation, and the jet lag, but he truly was our vacation MVP. Helped in no small part by the miraculous free seat in our row that let him actually lie down and sleep for most of the overnight flight (and which was at least partly responsible for an overly exhausted B to start weeping silently at around 11pm about the unfairness of it all and which also allowed H to mention on multiple occasions throughout the entire vacation that he slept the longest which was "really good because I need the most sleep because I'm the LITTLEST." Hey, when you're the youngest, you take your victories where you can find them.)

We made it to our absolutely adorable apartment on l'Ile de la Cite, literally around the corner from Notre Dame:

Our temporary home at no. 10 rue chanoinesse. Which apparently was where Abelard and Heloise so fatefully met.

Our courtyard. Entering in the door code and hitting the "porte" and "lumiere" buttons were highly coveted jobs.

We've finally found the world's smallest elevator, the perfect counterpart to the world's slowest elevator discovered last spring break in Costa Rica. We definitely need to develop this into a reality show.

The first day was fairly uneventful. We meandered down to the Jardin du Luxembourg, stopping en route at Dalloyau for the first of many macaron stops. Owen and Henry played for ages in the quintessentially French playground, albeit one filled with other American kids, while B and I explored the jardin looking for lady liberty.

Paris is bizarrely full of carousels, and Henry was definitely keen on riding all of them, especially this old-school one with the challenge of collecting brass rings.

That evening, we wandered in the other direction to the Marais to play football in Place des Vosges to keep (most of) us awake until dinner.

Introducing the Parisians to American football.

Moving on from football to just straight tackling.

The Berthillon ice cream and wine helped us rally enough for an after-dinner stroll down to the Seine before returning home to collapse.

Between the basketball end-of-season trophies and my super prestigious NYC half-marathon finisher medal (1:57, woo!), we are clearly a family of absolute CHAMPIONS. Also, I really need to remember not to run any more half marathons. It's about 7 miles too many.

Our bed has somehow become a big morning hangout scene again of late. This morning, while I pretended it wasn't quite time to get up yet and Owen was still asleep like a sensible child, Brendan and Henry decided to hold a karate training session there. B very sensibly kicked things off with some stretching: "Do the butterfly stretch and have your knees touch the bed. Oh who am I kidding? My knees will never touch!" Henry excitedly inquired whether they were both karate students and of course B quickly shot down Henry's crazy ideas about equality and assumed the role of teacher. Which, after a solid two weeks of tae kwon do under his belt (heh), seems entirely reasonable. After stretching, Brendan led them in a series of increasingly exuberant kicks and punches on the bed while Henry counted off in Korean.

Yesterday, Henry woke me up with a flying leap and a (very solid) landing on top of me. He informed me that he had just killed me and when I voiced some mild protest about dying pre-coffee, sternly told me, "you do know you're dead right? So you can't talk?" And the day before, Brendan and Henry decided to play "bucking bronco" on our bed. One guess how that turned out. It's all hilarious good times until somebody gets bucked right off the bed. Luckily that somebody likes to break falls with his face. Poor Henry.

My weekend of solo parenting while Kevin was "retreating" in Scottsdale did not get off to the finest of starts. The boys' nonstop fighting on Friday night resulted in what had to be one of my top five rage-iest parenting moments ever. There was considerable screaming and I demanded that they each write an essay about what it means to be a brother and to be respectful. Happily, we were all joking about it five minutes later and after I apologized for losing my temper, Owen suggested that I also owed them a letter about being respectful.

This was waiting for me from Brendan when I woke up Saturday morning:

And with some gentle reminding, Owen produced the following:

Henry insisted on participating too ("I'm a brother too! This octopus and squid are my letter!"). In the least surprising news ever, he is of course naked in this (skillfully cropped) photo:

After a relaxing morning of marble run building, we all trooped off to basketball. Two steps out of the building, Henry somehow did a full face plant on the sidewalk. As I was trying to help him up, he remained bizarrely boneless and collapsed again on my hand, spraining my pinkie finger (self-diagnosis, which I'm thoroughly qualified to do as a doctor's daughter and all). Between that and smashing my elbow that morning, I've concluded that single parenting, at least when I do it, is physically hazardous.

During basketball, Henry sat on my lap and we read approximately one zillion stories with the occasional "excuse me, I also farted" thrown into the mix. He then decided to document the game for posterity:

6/10 of the Pacers. They assure me that they're tied for first in the league this season.

Post-basketball, we all went to a birthday party for one of Henry's friends. Out of literally hundreds of overpriced ceramic options, Henry chose the French fry piggy bank.

Athletes, artists, we're raising real renaissance men here:

After a quick stop at the library for just a few books and a few minutes at home to read them, we continued the day's tour of upper west side public school gyms and all went off to Brendan's soccer practice. (As if soccer isn't enough of a time suck all spring and fall, we got an email last week cheering about the "great" news that they managed to get gym space so the kids could start practicing before the regular season starts. Yay.) From there, a lovely dinner at Red Farm ("wow your boys are good eaters" after we basically devoured an obscene amount of food), a quick stop at Maison Kayser for breakfast croissants, and home in time to watch the Karate Kid. Which, if you fast forward all the boring class snobbery/kissy stuff, really flies by.

On Sunday, I woke up and found a bed stripped of sheets (too much water at Red Farm, apparently), a table literally covered in croissant crumbs ("Henry decided it was too flaky so he picked off all the top part"), a kid-ravaged kitchen, and a semi-sizeable bug sauntering across the cabinet. So that wasn't the greatest. After a morning of laundry and "super intense balloon ball" and more marble run building, we went to the theat-ah to see the Lightning Princess.

People were enthusiastic.

I asked B to show me his best princess impression.

Subway'ing it back home. We are obviously beloved wherever we go (as evidenced by the empty seats all around us).

After Owen decided he really wasn't up for his soccer practice way the hell up at CUNY (hallelujah), we wound up back outside playing snow basketball and football. Give this city one sunny 40 degree day after this wretched winter, and everyone goes crazy. The playground was PACKED.

Henry came running into my room early this morning to angrily inform me, "Owen wrecked my city! He was being Godzilla and I know he did it on purpose! He said it was an accident but he was LYING. He said sorry but he had a slick smile on his face!"

Then there was this on the walk to school

Henry: "What's your favorite shape out of all the shapes?"

me: "Hmmm, a heart. Because I have so much love for you [lest anyone think me a hopeless sap, this was said mostly in jest, I swear]. What's your favorite?"

The day started at 3am when I was jolted awake by loud wailing and raced out of the bedroom to find Henry hacking up something - lung tissue? who knows, I was half asleep - in the bathroom. A few hours later, the normal morning chaos included Owen pogo sticking through the playroom and Brendan showing off his yoyo skills and joking - for reasons that now escape me - "hey, hey, now, let's not play the blame game here!" Just as I was about out the door, Henry skillfully deployed his crumpled up face of absolute despair until I caved and honored my previous (and promptly forgotten) promise to play chess before school. He very seriously instructed me on the finer points of rook and bishop movement and routinely exclaimed after I suggested he might want to reconsider moves that would let me capture his pieces - "Whoa, I really did NOT see that coming!" Of course, the chess game required our walk to school to be considerably brisker than usual, which resulted in occasional outbursts of "YOU'RE MAKING ME RUNNNNN. MY LEGS ARE TOOOO TIIIIIIREDDDD."

After yet another ice-slicked nightmare of a commute, and right before I went off to lead a two-hour highly-stressful work meeting, I got a call from school to announce B had broken out in hives. I triaged the hives news with a flurry of texts to Kevin and our sitter, and came out of my meeting to a slew of messages about B going to the doctor, despondent about the prospect of missing his final after-school basketball game. [He's fine although the cause of the hives remains a mystery for now.] I barely finished prepping for the next day's similarly stressful meeting while fielding calls from my sitter at urgent care, before racing home with just time enough for a quick Benadryl pickup.

As soon as I got home, by virtue of being the only one tall enough to reach the top of their ginormous marble run, I was pressed into nonstop marble dispensing duties by Brendan. Simultaneously, Henry was tracing his hand to make "ghosts" and asking for help with googly eye application, and Owen was showing me photos of the black dragonfish ... you probably know it by the name idiacanthus atlanticus ... which was the subject of his multimedia presentation at "Tech Fest" the next day. Owen then began dramatic cinema verite filming of the marbles running while H got in on the aquatic animal action and began quizzing me on tripod fish, tube worms, and orcas. I did not do well. Am I the only one who didn't know that orcas are actually dolphins? What madness is this?! H and I then went off to read stories - "in your room! Under the covers! So we can snuggle!" - where he helpfully summarized the entire plot for me in advance, I guess so it wouldn't be too suspenseful? To cut the preciousness of all that story-reading snuggling, when I walked in the door from work, Henry immediately informed me, "I love Ellen [his teacher] just a little bit more than you." Obviously he doesn't want me growing too complacent.

Oh, and did I mention that while we're suffering through yet another winter storm, Kevin is in Scottsdale for "work," if a partner retreat consisting mostly of golf and cocktails can be considered work.